A
The motive of Propaganda (which began to work much the earliest of the
three) concerned Religions, and also certain racial enthusiasms or
political doctrines which, by their sincerity and readiness for
sacrifice, had half the force of Religions.
Men found that the great papers (in their final phase) refused to talk
about anything really important in Religion. They dared do nothing but
repeat very discreetly the vaguest ethical platitudes. They hardly
dared do even that. They took for granted a sort of invertebrate
common opinion. They consented to be slightly coloured by the
dominating religion of the country in which each paper happened to be
printed--and there was an end of it.
Great bodies of men who cared intensely for a definite creed found
that expression for it was lacking, even if this creed (as in France)
were that of a very large majority in the State. The "organs of
opinion" professed a genteel ignorance of that idea which was most
widespread, most intense, and most formative. Nor could it be
otherwise with a Capitalist enterprise whose directing motive was not
conversion or even expression, but mere gain. There was nothing to
distinguish a large daily paper owned by a Jew from one owned by an
Agnostic or a Catholic. Necessity of expression compelled the creation
of a Free Press in connection with this one motive of religion.
Men came across very little of this in England, because England was
for long virtually homogeneous in religion, and that religion was not
enthusiastic during the years in which the Free Press arose. But such
a Free Press in defence of religion (the pioneer of all the Free
Press) arose in Ireland and in France and elsewhere. It had at first
no quarrel with the big official Capitalist Press. It took for granted
the anodyne and meaningless remarks on Religion which appeared in the
sawdust in the Official Press, but it asserted the necessity of
specially emphasizing its particular point of view in its own columns:
for religion affects all life.
This same motive of Propaganda later launched other papers in defence
of enthusiasms other than strictly religious enthusiasms, and the most
important of these was the enthusiasm for Collectivism--Socialism.
A generation ago and more, great numbers of men were persuaded that a
solution for the whole complex of social injustice was to be found in
what they called "nationalizing the means of production, distribution,
and exchange." That is, of course, in plain English, putting land,
houses, and machinery, and stores of food and clothing into the hands
of the politicians for control in use and for distribution in
consumption.
This creed was held with passionate conviction by men of the highest
ability in every country of Europe; and a Socialist Press began to
arise, which was everywhere free, and soon in active opposition to the
Official Press. Again (of a religious temper in their segregation,
conviction and enthusiasm) there began to appear (when the oppressor
was mild), the small papers defending the rights of oppressed
nationalities.
Religion, then, and cognate enthusiasms were the first breeders of the
Free Press.
It is exceedingly important to recognize this, because it has stamped
the whole movement with a particular character to which I shall later
refer when I come to its disabilities.
The motive of Propaganda, I repeat, was not at first conscious of
anything iniquitous in the great Press or Official Press side by side
with which it existed. Veuillot, in founding his splendidly fighting
newspaper, which had so prodigious an effect in France, felt no
particular animosity against the "Debats," for instance; his
particular Catholic enthusiasm recognized itself as exceptional, and
was content to accept the humble or, at any rate, inferior position,
which admitted eccentricity connotes. "Later," these founders of the
Free Press seemed to say, "we may convert the mass to our views, but,
for the moment, we are admittedly a clique: an exceptional body with
the penalties attaching to such." They said this although the whole
life of France is at least as Catholic as the life of Great Britain is
Plutocratic, or the life of Switzerland Democratic. And they said it
because they arose _after_ the Capitalist press (neutral in religion
as in every vital thing) had captured the whole field.
The first Propagandists, then, did not stand up to the Official Press
as equals. They crept in as inferiors, or rather as open ex-centrics.
For Victorian England and Third Empire France falsely proclaimed the
"representative" quality of the Official Press.
To the honour of the Socialist movement the Socialist Free Press was
the first to stand up as an equal against the giants.
I remember how in my boyhood I was shocked and a little dazed to see
references in Socialist sheets such as "Justice" to papers like the
"Daily Telegraph," or the "Times," with the epithet "Capitalist" put
after them in brackets. I thought, then, it was the giving of an
abnormal epithet to a normal thing; but I now know that these small
Socialist free papers were talking the plainest common sense when they
specifically emphasized as _Capitalist_ the falsehoods and
suppressions of their great contemporaries. From the Socialist point
of view the leading fact about the insincerity of the great official
papers is that this insincerity is Capitalist; just as from a Catholic
point of view the leading fact about it was, and is, that it is
anti-Catholic.
Though, however, certain of the Socialist Free Papers thus boldly took
up a standpoint of moral equality with the others, their attitude was
exceptional. Most editors or owners of, most writers upon, the Free
Press, in its first beginnings, took the then almost universal point
of view that the great papers were innocuous enough and fairly
represented general opinion, and were, therefore, not things to be
specifically combated.
The great Dailies were thought grey; not wicked--only general and
vague. The Free Press in its beginnings did not attack as an enemy. It
only timidly claimed to be heard. It _regarded itself_ as a
"speciality." It was humble. And there went with it a mass of
ex-centric stuff.
If one passes in review all the Free Press journals which owed their
existence in England and France alone to this motive of Propaganda,
one finds many "side shows," as it were, beside the main motives of
local or race patriotism, Religion, or Socialist conviction. You
have, for instance, up and down Europe, the very powerful and
exceedingly well-written anti-Semitic papers, of which Drumont's
"Libre Parole" was long the chief. You have the Single-tax papers. You
have the Teetotal papers--and, really, it is a wonder that you have
not yet also had the Iconoclasts and the Diabolists producing papers.
The Rationalist and the Atheist propaganda I reckon among the
religious.
We may take it, then, that Propaganda was, in order of time, the first
motive of the Free Press and the first cause of its production.
Now from this fact arises a consideration of great importance to our
subject. This Propagandist origin of the Free Press stamped it from
its outset with a character it still bears, and will continue to bear,
until it has had that effect in correcting, and, perhaps, destroying,
the Official Press, to which I shall later turn.
I mean that the Free Press has had stamped upon it the character of
_disparate particularism_.
Wherever I go, my first object, if I wish to find out the truth, is to
get hold of the Free Press in France as in England, and even in
America. But I know that wherever I get hold of such an organ it will
be very strongly coloured with the opinion, or even fanaticism, of
some minority. The Free Press, as a whole, if you add it all up and
cancel out one exaggerated statement against another, does give you a
true view of the state of society in which you live. The Official
Press to-day gives you an absurdly false one everywhere. What a
caricature--and what a base, empty caricature--of England or France or
Italy you get in the "Times," or the "Manchester Guardian," the
"Matin," or the "Tribune"! No one of them is in any sense general--or
really national.
The Free Press gives you the truth; but only in disjointed sections,
for it is _disparate_ and it is _particularist_: it is marked with
isolation--and it is so marked because its origin lay in various and
most diverse _propaganda_: because it came later than the official
Press of Capitalism, and was, in its origins, but a reaction against
it.
B
The second motive, that of indignation against _falsehood_, came to
work much later than the motive of propaganda.
Men gradually came to notice that one thing after another of great
public interest, sometimes of vital public interest, was deliberately
suppressed in the principal great official papers, and that positive
falsehoods were increasingly suggested, or stated.
There was more than this. For long the _owner_ of a newspaper had for
the most part been content to regard it as a revenue-producing thing.
The _editor_ was supreme in matters of culture and opinion. True, the
editor, being revocable and poor, could not pretend to full political
power. But it was a sort of dual arrangement which yet modified the
power of the vulgar owner.
I myself remember that state of affairs: the editor who was a
gentleman and dined out, the proprietor who was a lord and nervous
when he met a gentleman. It changed in the nineties of the last
century or the late eighties. It had disappeared by the 1900's.
The editor became (and now is) a mere mouthpiece of the proprietor.
Editors succeed each other rapidly. Of great papers to-day the
editor's name of the moment is hardly known--but not a Cabinet
Minister that could not pass an examination in the life, vices,
vulnerability, fortune, investments and favours of the owner. The
change was rapidly admitted. It came quickly but thoroughly. At
last--like most rapid developments--it exceeded itself.
Men owning the chief newspapers could be heard boasting of their power
in public, as an admitted thing; and as this power was recognized, and
as it grew with time and experiment, it bred a reaction.
Why should this or that vulgarian (men began to say) exercise (and
boast of!) the power to keep the people ignorant upon matters vital to
us all? To distort, to lie? The sheer necessity of getting certain
truths told, which these powerful but hidden fellows refused to tell,
was a force working at high potential and almost compelling the
production of Free Papers side by side with the big Official ones.
That is why you nearly always find the Free Press directed by men of
intelligence and cultivation--of exceptional intelligence and
cultivation. And that is where it contrasts most with its opponents.
C
But only a little later than this second motive of indignation against
falsehood and acting with equal force (though upon fewer men) was the
third motive of _freedom_: of indignation against _arbitrary Power_.
For men who knew the way in which we are governed, and who recognized,
especially during the last twenty years, that the great newspaper was
coming to be more powerful than the open and responsible (though
corrupt) Executive of the country, the position was intolerable.
It is bad enough to be governed by an aristocracy or a monarch whose
executive power is dependent upon legend in the mass of the people; it
is humiliating enough to be thus governed through a sort of
play-acting instead of enjoying the self-government of free men.
It is worse far to be governed by a clique of Professional Politicians
bamboozling the multitude with a pretence of "Democracy."
But it is intolerable that similar power should reside in the hands of
obscure nobodies about whom no illusion could possibly exist, whose
tyranny is not admitted or public at all, who do not even take the
risk of exposing their features, and to whom no responsibility
whatever attaches.
The knowledge that this was so provided the third, and, perhaps, the
most powerful motive for the creation of a Free Press.
Unfortunately, it could affect only very few men. With the mass even
of well-educated and observant men the feeling created by the novel
power of the great papers was little more than a vague ill ease. They
had a general conception that the owner of a widely circulated popular
newspaper could, and did, blackmail the professional politician: make
or unmake the professional politician by granting or refusing him the
limelight; dispose of Cabinets; nominate absurd Ministers.
But the particular, vivid, concrete instances that specially move men
to action were hidden from them. Only a small number of people were
acquainted with such particular truths. But that small number knew
very well that we were thus in reality governed by men responsible to
no one, and hidden from public blame. The determination to be rid of
such a secret monopoly of power compelled a reaction: and that
reaction was the Free Press.